to-be Keen 4-6 editor

Utilities for editing Keen:Galaxy and Keen:Dreams levels.
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

BTW is there any information regarding the tile data? For example how does a tile block your movement, how to make it a secret passage tile, etc? It'd be nice if I could edit that too!
The tile property data is stored inside the exe. Too bad I don't know anything else about that. There is however CK Guy's tile editor somewhere..

About the limits, probably something like 200x150 starts to be maximum. Not really sure, can't remember whether adurdin mentioned it once or am I just making things up.
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XkyRauh
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hehehe

Post by XkyRauh »

Better turn on God mode when dealing with that Dopefish--one touch and the game quits, with the error that it "tried to place an uncached sprite!" :-)

Looks incredible so far, z-1. Kudos on your hard work... wow.
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levellord
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Post by levellord »

Yes!

It is t3h 1337 editorz!
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Dopefish-enabled? I never had trouble getting a dopefish to work in level 1 when I was experimenting with TED, apart from the following:
Xky wrote:Better turn on God mode when dealing with that Dopefish--one touch and the game quits, with the error that it "tried to place an uncached sprite!" :-)
...which I think was to do with either the bubbles or the burping sprite. IIRK I read somewhere that it's fixable by placing the necessary sprites in the top corner or something wacky but I never bothered to try it.

Btw, this editor could easily be adapted to read Vorticons levels, right? That'd be quite classy. Not that a Keen4-6 editor isn't already awesome, though. Great work.

I won't bother offering any suggestions just yet. When there's a working beta out I'll give it a whirl and let you know what I think could be improved.
z-one
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Post by z-one »

http://jimsoft.spatang.com/keen/zone/kneditv0.ZIP This is not a final version and has bugs but it can be used without problems. The editor is capable of editing maps, exporting and importing them to and from the Keen games. Read the readme.txt!

If you have questions or bugs to report, tell me here or at PCKF.
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XkyRauh
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Post by XkyRauh »

CommanderSpleen wrote:
Xky wrote:Better turn on God mode when dealing with that Dopefish--one touch and the game quits, with the error that it "tried to place an uncached sprite!" :-)
...which I think was to do with either the bubbles or the burping sprite. IIRK I read somewhere that it's fixable by placing the necessary sprites in the top corner or something wacky but I never bothered to try it.
I think it just didn't cache the "Keen is dying while wearing a wetsuit" sprite, which the Dopefish collision probably asks the engine to spawn... right?
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levellord
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Post by levellord »

Yea, that sounds about right. Dopefish should only be in water levels, or we patch it to use Keens normal death sprite.
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

amazing! absolutely amazing. With your editor i can finnaly get to work on my keen 4 mod! i had some problems getting it started, i was missing two dll files, borlndmm.dll and cc3260mt.dll. I managed to download them else where though.

I have two questions, Is it possible to select large backrounds and paste them into the level (such as the entire tree backround)? And, is it possible to load modified keen graphics into the editor?
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XkyRauh
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yep

Post by XkyRauh »

z-1 said at the PCKF that as long as you haven't changed the number of sprites in the list, it should import just fine. I haven't tried it yet, but I'd imagine you'd want to compile your EGAHEAD file with modkeen before loading the editor, or something similar. :-) Let us know your progress!
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

I can change the sprite images easy enough, but im talking about the Tiles. The editor seems to load the graphics from a map.knp file (i have no idea how that file works). How can i get my new graphics into a map.knp file to load into the editor?
z-one
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Post by z-one »

Sorry for the dll's. I haven't thought about the consequence of using a separate dll for loading images. It requires borland's memory management dll's also.

There're two ways to get started. The first one is to load the map.knp, but then you are limited to the original graphics. The second is to create a new project and check the checkbox at the bottom of the window, and select which Keen episode would you like to work with. You'll have to set a map name (that can only be seen in the editor at the moment) and the tile image.

The original Keen games had a background image and a separate sprite+foreground image. This is different for my editor.

For the tile image you have to specify an image with transparency, like a png without a black+white mask! The mask should be the transparency. The tile image must have the background tiles first then the foreground tiles in this order, and there must be the same number of background tiles as in the original games. The tile image shouldn't include the sprites! There is a sprite.png in the KeenX directory, that will be used for the sprites. The number of sprites should be the same as in the original games.

I hope this is clear, but here is how it looks like:
---------
| back |
| grou |
| nd |
| fore |
| grou |
| nd |
---------

For drawing big areas of tiles: resize the tilelist on the right to be the same width as the original tile image. Select the top left tile of the area. Now hold down shift and click at the bottom right corner of the area. This creates a "brush" of tiles that you can use for drawing.

I'll include keyboard shortcuts for many actions too, as requested by Keenrush and LL, to match some other editor I haven't tried yet :)
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

hmm, i cant seem to get it to work. I made a .bmp file with the backround and then the foreground under that, but i got an error saying the tiles couldnt be loaded. And im not sure what you mean by "specify an image with transparency".

Im very computer illiterate, sorry for all the questions :)

But for the good news, ive completed my first level! Im very excited to finnaly be able to get my keen 4 mod going again.
z-one
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Post by z-one »

The original foreground image has two parts, the left side holds the tiles, while the right is a mask, where white shows where the left side should be transparent.

Open the image with an image editor that supports gif or png image format, and try to delete the pixels from the tiles that should be transparent. If you have photoshop I can tell you exactly what you need to do but I don't know much about other programs.
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levellord
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Post by levellord »

Tell you what z; just post an example image will ya?

We can modify that as we wish.
z-one
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Post by z-one »

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